sicklittlemonkey wrote:
On Oct 17, 3:16 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:If the problem has not changed, the solution need not change.Yeah, my 1 year and 10 months old daughter still loves StickyBear ABC in glorious 6-colour hires. On the IIgs version the sounds are actually less fun, and the graphics not much better. (I'd like to buy a copy of the 8-bit original if anyone has it.) Anyway, I suppose at some stage she'd appreciate a more realistic "apple" or "penguin" etc, but we're not there yet. ;-)In education and in many games, photorealistic graphics do not add significant value or playability, though they do increase the cost of the "solution".Very true. Graphics has probably been a pretty good driver of performance improvements though, but as you imply ... To what end?
Well, for an engineering workstation or a photographic or video workstation, there are clear advantages to extreme graphics capability. And, if the object is games that are indistinguishable from "reality", then "more is better". But a huge number of games do not benefit from more detailed displays. And would a 3D HD rendering of The Simpsons really add to the experience? ;-) Some people simply can't bring themselves to watch and enjoy black & white movies, but I think this speaks more to their inability than to any lack in the movies. "Hot" media encourage greater passivity of the observer, while "cool" media stimulate viewer participation, if you get my drift... ;-) -michael NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."